date

1 March 1808 Letter VI Omissa
1 March 1808

Letter VI

Omissa & Facienda

No Allegat n sans X examin

Blackstone, as if it were matter of peculiar importance, Blackstone fighing[?] up the injustice shops in the profit of which he had a /his/ share against the [...?] in /those rural shops, profit[?] of/ which he had no share in[?] speaks of the [...?], of both orders, temporal and spiritual, civil and [...?], as reaping from these and other such preachers from rakes some[?] in here[?] and there[?] and t'other part of the field of litigation, " a harvest of perjaries": as if the mischief of testimonial perjary were any thing different from that of the mendacity to which it gives [...?] and success: as if under the fee-gathering system there were any one set of Judges - any one set of Lawyers, to whom a crop of perjaries[?] was less acceptable, in the /by whose/ exertions made to produce such crops less sincere and strenuous[?]. Hence another: as if under any branch of that system it ever had failed to be, or in the nature of things ever could cease to be, an object of their [...?], to place and preserve the public mind, in the branches of it moral and intellectual, in a state of depravity[?] /depravation/ as consummate /compleat/ as possible.
Similar Items
  • Title: [1 March 1808 Letter VI Omissa]
    Description: 1 March 1808

    Letter VI

    Omissa & Facienda

    II. No Allegat n sans x examination

    No English lawyer - no, nor yet any Scotch lawyer - none at least who had any acquaintance with Jury trial as practiced on the Circuits[?] can be insensible to the importance and utility of cross-examination in the character of a security for veracity and a test of truth.

    Being to this degree good in some /so many/ cases, and those among the most important, why refuse /deny/ to /with hold from/ justice the benefit of it in any case? If thus there be a case in which the utility of it fails of being exemplified, the burthen of proof rests with those whom its utility in that case is untested[?].

    In principle the case proper to be excepted have just been indicated: they are the case in which the inconvenience in the shape of delay vexation and expence is so great as to be preponderant over the evil in the shape of misdecision, actual or probable.

    But these are not the cases in which the benefit of the security fro truth and rectitude of decision is with-holden: the with-holding of it is not determined /regulated/ by that principle, or by any principle having /having any sort of/ reference to the ends of justice.

    The exceptions extensive as is their range in English law, to a prodigious degree more so in Scotch law, are determined by the /those/ allied powers by whose united influence the decisions of law /procedure/ are grounded, viz. Fraud and Accident: Fraud in the shape of Lawyercraft, Accident where Lawyercraft has found /seen/ no special [...?] to interpoze.
  • Title: [29 Feb y 1808 Letter VI Omissa]
    Description: 29 Feb y 1808

    Letter VI

    Omissa & Facienda

    II. no Allegat sans Oath

    It is not necessary that professional lawyers should be habitual [...?]. It is not necessary that Judges should have been professional lawyers. Judicature not advocateship is the best school for judicature.

    What serves as a pretence at least and indeed in some degree as a reason for taking none but professional lawyers to serve /officiate as Judges is the practice and [...?] in a word the intellectual aptitude of which the [...?] of the profession is a cause.

    Thus it is that for the sake of one improvement in the intellectual part of a man's frame, the moral part is debased.

    Nor is this all. Not long ago an observation was made that if clever men sitting on the [...?] bench in the House of Commons he either belonged at that time /he were[?] there[?] or had at one time belonged at/ to the profession of the law.

    From such a training[?] can any thing better than habitual [...?] be rationally expected?
  • Title: [1 Feb y 1808 Letter VI Omissa]
    Description: 1 Feb y 1808

    Letter VI

    Omissa & Facienda

    No Allegat n sans X exam

     After no Allegat n without cross examination

    By this I mean not to say that no obligation should ever be delivered, but under the scrutiny of cross examination actually applied to it at the time: By such a regulation compleat exclusion would be put upon all affidavit evidence: and thereby abundance of delay vexation and expence necessitated, which without prejudice to rectitude of decision might be saved.

    On the occasion I suppose it according to the preceding rule settled that no allegation should be received without oath: or at any rate without the party's being liable, and being a [...?] of his being liable, to be put upon his oath to confirm the veracity of his allegation by the securities attached to the solemnity of the oath. This being assumed, what I mean to say here, is - that no allegation ought to be received though under the sanction of an oath, without a man's being either subjected to the scrutiny of cross-examination at the time, or being liable and understanding himself to be liable to be subjected to it at some future time: viz. at the requisition of the Judge or at the requisition of any party interested, if acceded to by the Judge: regard being had to the [...?] of the ends of justice, as in this as on so many other occasions are liable to antagonize, viz. rectitude of decision on one side, avoidance of delay vexation and expence on the other.